Optical fiber connectors are used to optically connect one optical fiber to another. One parameter used to measure the quality of the optical fiber connection made by the optical fiber connector is the insertion loss (IL), which is a measure of how much light is lost when passing from one fiber to the other through the optical fiber connector. In some configurations, the optical fiber connector being evaluated is referred to as the device under test (DUT) and the connector to which the DUT is connected is called the reference connector or reference jumper.
Current IL measurement methods used by most optical connector manufacturers require physical contact of the end faces of the DUT and the reference connectors, or the use of an index matching fluid between them. This contact-based method requires cleaning and performing a visual inspection before and after the IL measurement. These steps are time consuming and they reduce productivity.
To reduce the number of reworked or discarded connectors due to insertion loss failures, manufacturers have pursued improvement of IL by reducing core-to-ferrule alignment tolerances, but this have resulted in increased connector cost. Connector components manufacturers appear to have reached the limit of their technology to satisfy a market with continual demand for improvement. With a production of connectors that is only increasing year after year to satisfy the market demand, there is a need for a more efficient, flexible and scalable method for inspecting optical fiber connectors